News

The present interview with Alex Callinicos was performed over several weeks by email spanning late July to mid September. The early questions took place at the start of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The last five questions were answered in one go in mid September. Because of the lengthiness of the interview it was not possible to pose any further questions arising out of these answers.

ANTI-CAPITALIST forces moved to the centre stage of French politics last weekend. The country's two main far left organisations announced their united electoral challenge in important regional and European elections due next June-the same time as similar elections in Britain.

US SECRETARY of State Colin Powell was forced to cancel a visit to Greece due to take place on Wednesday of this week. He had arranged to meet the Greek prime minister in the capital, Athens. But anti-war campaigners, as here, found a huge response to protests they called to stop Powell.

THE UPRISING was the culmination of a month of strikes and demonstrations after troops killed seven demonstrators on 20 September. The protesters were calling for a referendum over the neo-liberal government's export of natural gas to the United States.

REPORTS FROM the radical news agency Econoticias tell the story of last weekend: Thursday At least a quarter of a million workers and people from almost all the lower class neighbourhoods of El Alto and La Paz have surrounded the government palace. They have given the most hated man in the history of the country, the millionaire president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado, a last chance to resign and flee Bolivia.

Brid Smith, a member of the Socialist Workers Party of Ireland, spoke to Socialist Worker from Mountjoy women's prison in Dublin The movement against the bin tax is pitting working class communities against a corrupt political establishment and its big business cronies. It is the biggest upsurge in Ireland since the campaign against increased taxes on workers' wages over two decades ago.

A SOCIALIST member of Ireland's parliament and a local councillor were both jailed last week for standing alongside the working class people they represent. Until now the essential public service of collecting rubbish has been provided free in Ireland, and funded by general taxation. The right wing government wants to impose local charges for rubbish collection-a bin tax.

MINERS BLOCKADED main roads and railway lines in Silesia in Poland last week in a battle against unemployment. They were joined by railway workers who themselves are facing privatisation and mass sackings. Unfortunately the blockades lasted only three hours and involved only 3,000 protesters.

HUNDREDS OF thousands of workers in Bolivia, from miners to bus drivers, struck on Monday demanding the resignation of the country's president. Union leaders called the protests amid rising anger and protest, fuelled by the deep and worsening poverty in the poorest country in South America. Over two thirds of the 8.3 million people live below the poverty line of $2 a day.

PROTESTERS celebrated the collapse of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Cancun, Mexico, on Sunday as a defeat for the global corporations and the world's most powerful governments. Commentators in Britain, from the Guardian to former New Labour minister Clare Short (masquerading in Cancun as a BBC reporter), argued that the Cancun collapse was a "blow to the world economy" and a "setback for the world's poor".

"A DEVASTATING defeat for the political and economic elite." That's how a TV commentator referred to the result of the referendum on joining the euro single currency in Sweden on Sunday. The vote was tipped to be close, following the murder of the foreign minister Anna Lindh last week. Lindh was pro-euro and commentators expected sympathy for her would shift votes to the yes camp. But the no side won a clear victory, with 56.1 percent against 41.8 percent. This is the first time that people have voted against the ruling elite here.

MILLIONS OF people across the US last week glimpsed a small part of what their government and military have inflicted on people in Baghdad. From New York to Detroit and Cleveland, and across the border to Toronto and Ottawa in Canada, the lights went out and the power died.

CHILE SAW its biggest national strike last week since protests against the military dictatorship in the 1980s. The one-day strike came only weeks before the 11 September 30th anniversary of the coup which saw General Pinochet topple the elected government.